Barely a week separates the country from the referendum on the Constitution of the new Republic. But everything happens as if we were heading towards a non-event. The campaign is struggling to get off the ground and the billboards remain bare. Even the “yes” defenders seem to prefer more conspicuous locations than only the ISIE controllers [Instance supérieure indépendante pour les élections] couldn’t see.
The prize goes to the defenders of the “yes” in La Manouba [une ville de la banlieue nord-ouest de Tunis]who found nothing better than to display a big green “yes”, in the colors of paradise, at the entrance to the cemetery.
Everything is already played
In this general nonchalance, the dice seem cast and only a few uncertainties persist. The most important is on the side of the opponents [à] the Constitution of the new Republic. Will they boycott the referendum outright or will they go to the polling stations to slip a no into the ballot box? Those who defend the boycott want to show their opposition to the July 25 process, lower the participation rate to the point of undermining the legitimacy of the whole process as well as that of the President of the Republic.
On the other hand, those who advocate participation in the vote hope to collect half a million “no”, i.e. the number equivalent to that of the participants in the electronic consultation judged “successful” by the President of the Republic himself, which makes opponents of the new Constitution a political expression that no one can now ignore.
Opposite, there is a whole panoply of certainties, of which here are a few. The first is that the “yes” will largely prevail. Not because the project presented is acceptable or because it constitutes a new social contract, the result of broad national consultation, far from it. It will be for lack of fighters, because the opponents of the new Constitution are still as divided as before, for the same reasons and with the same egos as before. Their descent into hell and the lack of love that Tunisians have for them will continue as long as they have not decided to change their approach and leaders.
The independence of the electoral commission in question
The second certainty is that the ISIE and the HAICA [Haute Autorité indépendante de la communication audiovisuelle] seriously disrupted the referendum campaign and largely contributed to its failure. The ISIE is no longer an independent electoral body since all its members have been appointed by the President of the Republic, the sole head of all powers. By its lack of professionalism, its prevarications, its contradictory decisions, its flexible calendar according to the desires of the executive and its blatant myopia concerning all the offenses committed by the supporters of the president, the ISIE board flouted the rule of fairness, disrupted the conduct of the campaign and risked distorting the results of the vote.
The primary responsibility lies with the president of the ISIE as well as some of his deputies who have shown a disconcerting malleability. As for the HAICA, it betrayed its essential mission to defend freedom of expression and joined forces with the ISIE in a fool’s bargain, draconian and anti-democratic. Knowing that she does not appear among the constitutional bodies in the Constitution of the new Republic, it will be said of her that the HAICA during her lifetime did not succeed in playing its role as a regulatory body for the audiovisual landscape, but that ‘at the time of giving up the ghost she did not manage to die with dignity either, with her head held high.
“The president takes the Tunisians for fools”
On the merits and concerning the content of the project itself, we will limit ourselves to a single certainty: the Constitution of the new Republic establishes a presidentialist regime which is similar to a pure and hard dictatorship and opens the way to a religious state. The fixes made the day before Eid are only smoke bombs. Reacting to this, Dean Sadok Belaid said that the President of the Republic takes Tunisians for fools. It’s cruel, but it sums it all up.
However, the most important certainty seems to relate to the life expectancy of the Constitution of the new Republic. This Constitution will cease to exist the very moment Kais Saïed leaves power. He who is so keen to inscribe his work in history, historians will note that his Constitution was one of the most ephemeral in the history of the country.